Thread: Voter Caging
View Single Post
Old 09-18-2008, 12:03 PM   #35 (permalink)
loquitur
Junkie
 
loquitur's Avatar
 
Location: NYC
Rekna, private entities can't take votes away. That's the point you are missing. All private entities can do is either (1) try to persuade the govt not to recognize certain voters as acceptable based on noncompliance with established criteria, in which case either the govt can accept that position or not, or (2) go directly to the voter and in a legal manner try to persuade the voter not to vote or to vote as the private entity advocates (that means no lying, which is fraud, and no threats). There are existing statutes that prohibit misconduct in the course of both those categories of activities. In light of that, what additional restriction are you advocating in terms of "caging" that are not already illegal?

As for the selective recounts, my position is NOT that the Gore forces didn't have the right to go to the counties they chose in order to advocate for recounts selectively. They had the right to do that and it's not a crime. What you're advocating is that the private nongovernmental entity - the Gore campaign - didn't have the right to pick and choose where they would advocate to have the recounts done on a selective basis. Of course they had that right. And the other side, by the same token, had the right to advocate that either there's a recount everywhere or a recount nowhere. The govt ultimately does the counting, and it's bound by law to comply with whatever the applicable legal standards are. But that tells you nothing about the scope of private people's right to advocate a standard other than the one that ultimately is followed.

The flaw in your logic is that you're collapsing what private people have the right to do with what govt is obligated to do. Very different issues.

As far as Republicans going after blacks because they are Democrats, can we agree that if black voting patterns went majority Republican, the practices you're complaining about wouldn't be happening? And if that's the case, then what the GOP operatives are doing is not tied to the fact that the voters are black but to the fact that they tend Democrat. If they were black and tended Republican this wouldn't happen. So it's not racial discrimination at all.
loquitur is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360